Chinese food + white bread = yay!

St. Louis Stories #1
This week I'm going to be busting out a special ten-part series about St. Louis, focusing on unique aspects of this city that most people probably don't know about and some of the more memorable events here in the past 20 years or so.

Because nothing interesting ever happens here, St. Louis likes to pride itself as the birthplace of a few random popular food items such as the hot dog bun, the ice cream cone and toasted ravioli. BFD, right? But one of St. Louis' all-time greatest contributions to food is rarely ever mentioned (presumably, out of shame) and basically unheard of anywhere else.

I remember being 17ish in the supposedly black (but actually very white) city of Atlanta and looking for a place to get some chan, nullus. I found a place that looked promising enough (i.e. it was a real shithole, nullus), but a quick scan of the menu revealed nothing but garbage like beef and broccoli and General Tso's chicken - the same shit they sell at Hy-Vee out in Kurt Warner country.

Needless to say, there was no St. Paul sandwich. What's that, you say? Basically, it's egg foo young on white bread with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and pickle. A cursory Google search reveals that there was once some documentary about it on PBS, and I see it also has its own wikipedia page. Less famous, but equally as gully is the Happy Box - fried rice, egg foo young and white bread in a to-go box.

As gross as I'm sure it sounds, white bread with Chinese food is some of the best eating that could possibly be done. If I was to leave St. Louis - which seems less and less likely with each passing day - it's one of the few things I would actually miss.